Tag Archives | Heidi Sonboul

Is the end near for Google+? Murmurs are getting louder in the tech community that Google+’s days are numbered after several ominous developments in the past few months.

First, in April, Google executive Vic Gundotra, the executive in charge of Google+, suddenly left the company citing family reasons. At the same time, it became apparent that many of the engineers responsible for building Google+ were being reassigned to other areas of the company. Then in late May, at a code conference in California, Google co-founder Sergey Brin told the audience that “It was probably a mistake for me to be working on anything tangentially related to social to begin with.”

Google+ has never reached the popularity of Facebook and Twitter, achieving only a fraction of the active users in a month of their two major competitors, although it has found niche popularity in certain communities (like the photography community). Google has a history of killing products with avid user bases that it doesn’t consider profitable or a success – most recently and notably Google Reader. It also has a history of letting products die a slow death by not developing or maintaining them – most notably at the moment Feedburner, which is also on a deathwatch in the community of online publishers that rely on it. Continue Reading →

Scrapbooking companies have been falling like dominoes lately, as four well-known companies have shut down, filed for bankruptcy (or both) since early December.

GCD Studios

California-based GCD Studios filed for Chapter 7 (liquidation) bankruptcy in early December, listing assets of less than $2,000 and debts of over $2 million. The company ceased operations in late 2013, listing no profits for 2013 and a little over $300k for 2012. The vast majority of GCD’s debt is to investors, including owner/president Michael Rountree.

In it’s heyday, GCD boasted ground-breaking lines from industry luminaries like Melody Ross, Heidi Sonboul, Kathy Davis, and Donna Salazar, and was one of the first companies to try to bring the concept of mixed media to the masses in the scrapbook segment through lines like Ross’s Chip Art. Sonboul has now launched her own company at the CHA show in January, and Salazar continues to build her licensed line through other companies. Ross appears to be focusing on her retreat business for the moment. Continue Reading →

Heidi Sonboul, previously known for her work for companies such as GCD Studios, is launching her own company next month at the CHA Mega Show in Anaheim. Chickaniddy Crafts will showcase Heidi’s design style under her own label brand for the first time.

The Chickaniddy Crafts website won’t be launched until next week, but Heidi has shared exclusive sneak peeks of her first two collections with Scrapbook Update! See them here before anywhere else! Continue Reading →